


Layers

by greenkangaroo



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, M/M, Politics, Polyamory, War, the care and keeping of your grumpy reptile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 18:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10792068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenkangaroo/pseuds/greenkangaroo
Summary: Everything smells like blood and ash and there is a child on top of him. Chouza/Orochimaru/Wife because there is no God and I have a very specific and beautifully useless talent for things like this. Originally posted to my tumblr and titled 'Winding Trails'.





	Layers

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this fic, Chouza's wife is named Reiko, since SOMEONE never bothered giving her a name. The canon age difference between Orochimaru and Chouza is twelve years; I tightened that up to ten. Timeline here is wobbly at best and nonexistent at worst because wtf is linear story progression anyway?

—

Everything smells like blood and ash and there is a child on top of him.

Not on top, per say; perhaps it is more correct to say he is on top of the child, half-cradled against the boy's shoulder and protected by a wedge of rock, summoned with two hand seals and a sputter of chakra. 

His chest is full of hollow rasping and the pain has dulled to an allover throb. He knows this is a bad thing. He knows that he needs to get up, to seek help, to find- who was he with? What was he doing?

“Don’t move,” the child hisses, and hands that are far stronger than a child should have pull him down and close. He can feel how the other ninja twists a kunai in his palm, ready for anything or at least making a good show of it.

The boy is warm. Unusually so.

He makes the mistake of closing his eyes.

—

He survives.

The child- Akimichi Chouza- is ten years his junior, only newly a chunin.

Desperate times indeed, when a pillar clan heir is put on the battlefield.

“You need a heavier flak jacket.” Chuoza says to him, leaning on a bo pole twice his height and munching on a rice ball. The older man snorts. “No I don’t.”

“Yes you do. You can’t carry heat to save your life. One good rainstorm’ll do you.”

“Chouza!” Comes a call from outside the medical tent and he grins, distorting the blue streaks on his cheeks.

The smile is almost disturbing in how pure it is, how completely gentle in this the heart of hell.

“Duty calls. Or at least Ino does. And if I don’t go now he’ll start screeching.”

Chouza stuffs the last of his rice ball into his mouth. “Don’t go freezing to death.” He says to the grown man he dragged back behind friendly lines.

Orochimaru barely has time to think of a retort before the chubby chunin is gone.

—

The second time they meet is again in a tent, but this time it’s the mess and this time Orochimaru is getting a Look.

“what?” He asks, and he can tell this amuses Jiraiya because of how the idiot snorts.

“Go back and get more food.” The littleish redhead orders.

Orochimaru lifts one elegant brow. “This is sufficient.”

“For a garter snake.” The redhead responds cheerfully. “Which you are not.”

Jiraiya is flat out laughing now. Orochimaru takes a deep breath. “If I wanted a mother, I’d find a way to resurrect mine.” He says shortly.

“I bet she’d tell you to eat more, too.” Chouza says, holding his ladle like a club. The hair net makes the outfit, or so Jiraiya claims later.

—

The war is over.

“There will be other wars.” Chouza says this to Orochimaru. He is fresh from his jounin exam. “There always are.”

“Is peace a fallacy?” Orochimaru asks, curious, intrigued and wishing he wasn’t.

Chouza shakes his head. “Peace is never a fallacy.” He says.

“Yet you believe there will be more war.”

“War is inevitable and so is peace.” Chouza says. “As long as they exist, they are. That’s that.”

His friends come soon after, Shikaku slouching and looking half-asleep and Inoichi with a cardshark smile. Orochimaru bids Chouza goodnight.

“Interesting company you keep,” he hears Shikaku say.

“Better than some.” Chouza replies. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry.”

“You’re not wrong.”

Orochimaru leaves the bar and thinks about peace and war.

—

Peace is boring and Danzo offers such fascinating things.

Orochimaru doesn’t mean to stalk the street where the Akimichi Compound begins but it is smack-dab in the middle of the restaurant district, for obvious reasons. There are carts there open late.

One night he meets a woman. She is plump and gentle and practically has ‘Chouza’ written all over her.

“You must be Orochimaru.” She says as she serves his dumplings. “Chouza said you come here sometimes.”

Orochimaru wrinkles his nose. She smiles. “He said you’d do that, too.” She said.

Orochimaru begins avoiding the street. He contemplates Danzo more heavily. Opportunities are slim when there aren’t kunai in the air.

—

Chouza is a threat and Orochimaru can’t figure out how, at first.

Then he attends the Clan meeting, which is technically his job as he is head of a clan (what clan? He is the only one left, a nation in being, a kingdom of one, whittled to nothing by fight after fight.)

Tempers rise and Chouza cools them. Words become sharp, and Chouza dulls them.

Danzo puts a piece down on the field, and Chouza counters it.

Whether they realize it or not, Shikaku and Inoichi back him up. Fugaku does, too.

Danzo stares at a broad chested, red haired wall.

the Third declares the session over.

Orochimaru does not recognize the smile Chouza gives.

It is not gentle, and it is not cheerful. It is the smile a wolf might wear before a wounded deer.

When Chouza leaves, despite his great size, he makes no sound.

—

Orochimaru’s first mistake is agreeing with Danzo’s desire to take an ANBU.

His second mistake is not paying attention to the familiar size and movement of that ANBU.

His third mistake is looking Chouza in the eye when the other ninja asks him, “Is this worth it?”

—

In Chouza’s study, drinking Reiko’s tea, Orochimaru does his best to stay silent.

It only works for so long.

When he is done, Chouza says, “There are better ways.”

Orochimaru looks at him. “What could you come up with,” he asks, “that I have not?”

The argument here is clear. One of these men is a Sannin, a genius. The other is the next in a long line of romantic overfed fools who tend to die on battlefields like dominoes falling over.

“If Danzo is dead,” Chouza asks, turning a pen in thick fingers, “who would fill the void he leaves?”

Beside him, Reiko pours more tea and then drapes another thick quilt over Orochimaru's thin shoulders. 

The night air outside is still.

—

The first night Orochimaru spends at the Akimichi Compound ends in the early morning. He slips from the back doors in the shape of a viper and when he washes away the scented smoke from their bedroom he almost misses it.

—

“Your husband I can understand,” Orochimaru says to Reiko as she brushes his hair. “But why you?”

Reiko gives Orochimaru a considering look in the mirror. “My parents were mercenaries.” She says.

She doesn’t elaborate. She doesn’t have to. Mercenaries don’t last long in the ninja world.

Orochimaru begins writing grant requests and keeping careful tabs on Danzo.

—

Hiruzen picks Minato and Danzo dies.

It’s quite the thing, actually- an explosion exposing the continued existence of a secret intel branch that the Third had officially disbanded. Children are found long thought lost.

Minato goes through the rubble with a fine-toothed comb and when he comes to Orochimaru it is with a hard edge and a warm smile.

“It would be best,” he says as he reads through Orochimaru’s grant requests, “to perhaps be a bit more transparent with things like this.”

“I suppose.” Orochimaru agrees. “Though, Lord Fourth, there will always be a need…”

“So I am aware.” Minato admits, and he signs the paperwork.

—

“I’m pregnant!” Reiko says to Orochimaru when she brings him lunch at the worksite.

He stares at her.

When Orochimaru wakes up, he can hear Chouza laughing.

“We’re fairly certain it’s mine.” The Akimichi says.

“Only fairly.” Reiko scolds him.

Orochimaru finds himself wishing desperately that he drank.

—

There is another war, and this time Chouza is big enough to lift him, guard him, stand in front like every other idiot member of his idiot self-sacrificing clan of _idiots._

“Run!” Orochimaru snaps and it comes out a hiss. Chouza bears teeth at him, swings his bo pole. An approaching enemy is speared on it, thrown like a rag doll.

“If I don’t bring you home,” Chouza says, “Reiko will kill me.”

Mud is churned with blood. Rumors come of the Salamander declaring peace.

Chouza and Orochimaru share a look.

Peace won’t last.

—

The baby’s name is Chouji, and he has a fascination with Orochimaru’s hair.

“You know I’ve never seen a child who likes to chew as much as this one.” Reiko says.

Orochimaru winces and holds the little butterball at arm’s length, as best he can manage while wearing the so-large-Jiraiya-AND-Tsunade-would-die-laughing-if-they-saw yukata borrowed from one of the smaller Akimichi cousins.

“You’re bad at this.” Chouza says to him. “Doesn’t your library have books on childcare?”

“It is a library and a research center.” Orochimaru says sullenly.

Chouza takes Chouji effortlessly, presses a soft kiss to Orochimaru’s cheek before immediately vacating his personal space.

\---

The servants of the Akimichi household are pleased that their small dramas are not nearly as interesting as those of other noble houses. 

Oh, yes, there are the new robes that clearly belong to neither their Patriarch nor their Matriarch. They keep them clean and in a certain drawer. 

There are the winding trails in the back garden, clearly left by a snake sliding across the sand. They sweep them up.

There are sometimes nights when either Lord Chouza or Lady Reiko will request the lamps remain lit long past the normal hour and their people are happy enough to leave the wicks burning and the switches up. 

Theirs is not a demanding clan and if sometimes a visitor or a dignitary spots a tall, skinny figure with a black head of hair amongst the walking mountains and starts asking questions, well.

Questions are easy to hush up. As easy as it is to bully the family viper into wearing another layer. 

He does get cold _so_ easily. 

—

**Author's Note:**

> for those of you wondering, yes, Chouji has a grumpy uncle Orochimaru.


End file.
